Love From Roger
by Rose O'Carroll
Summary: When Roger dies, his mother talks to Mark to find out what his life had been like, prompting Mark to reflect on all the people Roger-- and he-- have lost over the years.
1. Prologue

A/N: My very first fic! It started out as a little story when I noticed that, if Roger stopped leaving the house a year ago when April died and the show starts on Christmas Eve, then April must have died on Christmas last year. Then it grew. Rather mammothly, actually. I have eleven chapters planned out. Incidentally, if you want a mental image, the Roger I'm going for here is not our dearest Adam Pascal, but the guy in the last-show-on-Broadway movie version with all the guyliner and the tattoos. It just gave me a more... interesting... mental image in a couple of the later chapters.

Disclaimer: Rent isn't mine, unless there's something my parents aren't telling me.

_Roger Davis, a cult singer/songwriter especially famed for his personal, confessional lyrics about his partner Mimi Marquez, his struggles with HIV and his life as an impoverished artist, died Wednesday of complications from AIDS in his apartment in New York City. He was 39 years old. _

_Independent filmmaker Mark Cohen, a longtime friend, said that Davis had learned in September that he had only a few months more to live and spent most of his remaining months at home, surrounded by his friends and loved ones._

_Davis, who established himself as a mainstay of the rock scene in the post-punk era, followed his vision through a series of astonishing musical changes that continued to resonate for other rockers and a dedicated although small contingent of devoted fans and critics. _

Mark threw down the paper in disgust. Thirty-nine years creating the music he loved most, and that was all Roger became? Sixteen column inches in the back pages of the _New York Times_? A (God help him) "cult singer/songwriter" with a "dedicated although small group of fans"?

He felt a sudden, irresistible urge to find out whoever wrote this excuse for toilet paper, kidnap him and make him suffer the most exquisite agony Mark could devise.

Well, maybe not an endless repeat of Celine Dion. Mark was still civilized.

That thought was quickly followed by a second thought, that is, Mark was pretty sure he still had the number of that anarchist who'd lived next door in their squat and knew how to make napalm, and that the New York Times building would look really pretty as an explosion.

Mark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He'd known Roger for more than half his life and lived with him for most of that. Even now whenever he looked over his shoulder he expected to see Roger's roguish grin or hear him complain about the new song that just wasn't going right. Even seeing one of his leather jackets thrown on the floor (despite living with the man longer than most married couples did, Mark had still not managed to persuade Roger that dirty clothes belonged in the laundry basket) would be welcome.

Instead, Mark's apartment was full of an echoing emptiness, waiting for a man who would never again come back.

No one to complain with about bosses that would not see their visions or actors/drummers/tech guys (delete as appropriate) who wouldn't do as told or critics who appeared to not know any words besides "quirky." No one to laugh at the old running jokes that went back to the time when guests had to call them from a pay phone to throw down the keys. No one whom Mark had held while he wept or shook from heroin withdrawal or fought for a last breath of life.

Soon he and Joanne would be the only ones left.

They haunted him like shadows, the dead ones. Their names were like a steady drumbeat in his ears. _AprilAngelCollinsMimiBennyRogerandMaureensoonenough_.

(The people at the AIDS hospital knew Mark. He had been a fixture there longer than most of the nurses. Occasionally the new ones mistook him for a patient since he was around so much.)

Roger was dead.

Mark felt like crying out to the God he didn't believe in. Roger couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible. He had loved with such a passionate intensity and brooded like he was Byron back from the grave and lived like every day was his personal victory against death and sang like a little taste of heaven. How could someone so alive be reduced to nothing more than ashes in a little urn on Mark's death, while so many of the walking dead still lived their dull little suburban lives? It wasn't fair.

It just wasn't fair.

A knock came at the door and Mark realized with a start that (a) his face was wet, (b) the sun was high in the sky and (c) he had done nothing except stare at Roger's urn for several hours. "Come in," he called out, his voice sounding dead to even his own ears. "It's unlocked, I'm pretty sure."

In some dim corner of his brain, Mark wondered who it could possibly be. Maureen was too weak to come here by herself and he'd given Joanne Roger's key. He'd possibly just invited in some Jehovah's Witness.

Instead, a pale, thin woman with a well-lined face, decorous black clothes and an oversized handbag appeared in the room. "Excuse me," she said. "I came as soon as I could. Was I too—?"

Twenty years of forlorn, ignored answering-machine messages played in Mark's head in half a second, followed by a wave of guilt. "You're—you're Lisa Davis," he said. "You're Roger's mother."

Lisa seemed to think of nothing she could do but nod. "Is my son… still here?" she asked, looking around anxiously.

There was no good way to say it. There never was a good way to say it.

Mark shook his head. In answer to the questions in her eyes, he said, "A few days ago. I cremated the body." He gestured towards the urn on his desk. "I would have waited if you knew…"

Lisa laughed softly. "You never picked up when I called. I thought it would be easier to just show up. Harder to refuse." She picked up a picture of Roger at a concert. Her long fingers traced his features. "You know, I hadn't seen him since he was nineteen. He looks." She paused, searching for the right word. "Older. More worn."

Mark's wave of guilt was quickly growing into a full-blown tsunami.

"I played his albums for my friends, whenever they came over," she said. Mark got the feeling she was speaking more to the picture than him. "I played them and I said, I said, 'That's my son. That's my boy.'"

Mark didn't dare say anything and interrupt her reverie. In fact, he felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if he was walking in on something private.

"I wish," she said softly, so soft Mark had to strain to hear it, "I wish I could know what he had been. You know, for twenty years all I've known of my son is postcards twice a year? 'April's dead. I have AIDS. Merry Christmas.' I kept them all." Her voice was full of a sort of desperate, quavering hilarity. "I had a scrapbook. Every newspaper article. Every interview. Every review, even the bad ones. I'd look over it and I'd wonder, what was he like? Did he live in the way I'd dreamed, when he was younger and I bent over his crib and kissed his cheek and imagined what he would be when he grew up?"

"Your son was a great man." The words left Mark's lips without his mind having anything to do with the matter. "And he was very much loved. I think he was happy, in the end. You would have been proud of him."

Lisa set down the picture quietly. "Tell me," she said, in the tones of someone who had just made a major decision. "Tell me everything."

A/N: So. If you liked it, send me a review and make me feel great. If you didn't like it, send me a review and make me write better. If you have no opinion about it, move to the Neutral Planet from Futurama.

An imaginary cookie to the first person who notices the _Order of the Stick_ reference. If you don't read it, you need to.


	2. Parents

Author's Note: A great big thank you to all the lovely reviewers who took the time to tell me how wonderful I am. Mostly this part is just due to me speculating about how Roger-- who seems to be generally a pretty decent guy-- got so far estranged from his parents. I got the idea for exactly how to do it reading Tennesee Williams' Glass Menagerie in class and deciding that Tom Wingfield was a lot like Roger. Sign #162 you're a Renthead: you relate everything, no matter how arcane or distantly related, to Rent.

Disclaimer: They aren't mine and anyway suing me would be pointless, as I have no money.

Roger and his family didn't really understand each other very much.

His father was a large, burly man, Irish Catholic, who watched football every weekend and worked as a cop. His brothers were also all large, burly men, Irish Catholic, who played football in high school and worked as cops or firefighters or occasionally in a factory once graduated. Roger was a skinny, scrawny boy who didn't believe in God, got beat up after school and had a guitar permanently attached to his fingers.

But Roger's father was a good man who loved his sons in his own way, and tried his hardest to mold his youngest son something more along the lines of the rest of the family. Every Saturday he struggled to teach Roger how to throw a football, even when the attempts ended in massive bruises on both sides. When Roger came home from school crying with two black eyes, his father told him to take it like a man and punch those SOBs right in the mouth. He dragged Roger off to church and grounded him when he disappeared halfway through the service to smoke pot on a street-corner. He used his connections to get him in the police academy and keep him there, even after the fifth time Roger overslept and missed his classes after playing guitar in nightclubs until 4 AM.

But even Roger's father's apparently infinite patience could not cope with what Roger had just dragged home.

His father banged a fist on the dining-room table. "You're not going to New York City and that is final!"

Roger lit a cigarette. He didn't smoke much, usually just when he wanted to look cool or needed to steady his nerves. Despite his inner worry, his voice was calm and unshaken. "I'm nineteen. I can do what I want."

"Not under my roof!" His father had turned roughly the same red as a stop-sign.

Roger inhaled deeply, feeling the acrid smoke in his lungs. "That would be the general idea, yes."

"This is about that faggot friend of yours, isn't it?"

Roger had met Mark, a film student at UCLA, when Mark was filming a documentary about the LA music scene. In many ways, their relationship was like a romance. At first sight they had known that they were going to be best friends. They went out to eat Chinese and watch bad movies together. They were so similar it was like they had been made for each other—their ideals, their dreams, their hatred of their families. They were soulmates, not in the way of those trashy novels with Fabio on the cover that his mother read, but in the real sense: the sort of friend you could not see for three years and, when you met again, within five minutes it would be like you had never left; the sort of friend who would go to nightclubs at 3 AM when he had a test the next day just to see him play the same songs he did every time; the sort of friend who would drive an hour so they could spend ten minutes together, and count it time well-spent.

Roger's father had combined these facts with Roger's general unmanliness and jumped to the obvious conclusion.

Her mother, a nervous woman with hands that fluttered around her face, said quickly, "Not that there's anything wrong with that, we support your lifestyle choice—"

"Lisa!" Roger's father shouted. "You're indulged the boy long enough! If it wasn't for you, I would have nipped this whole business in the bud. But you bought him a guitar, you made me vouch for him when he said he was holding the marijuana for a friend, you let him cry instead of telling him to be a man. I say, enough! The rebellious phrase is _over_. He will shape up instead of acting up."

But Roger was tired. He had been playing gigs till 5 AM two or three nights a week for the past month, trying to save a little money for New York so he didn't have to pawn his Fender. Every morning at six sharp his mother's cheery voice floated in, "Rise and shine!", marking the beginning of another day of labor to reach his father's dream. He was tired. And the last thing he wanted to do was argue the platonic nature of his friendship with Mark.

But his father, who never stayed mad for more than five minutes at a time, was already calming down into his usual self: placid, with a braying voice and a manner that reminded Roger of a cow. "Your mother and I called in every favor we had to get you in the police academy. We scrimped and saved so you didn't have to have a second job. And this is how you repay us?"

"Roger, you know we love you," his mother said quietly, "but we just don't love the way you're acting. It's like you don't care about us, or life, or anything besides that rock music of yours."

Roger glanced from his father's still-scarlet face to his mother's well-chewed lip. He shook his head slowly. "You don't get it. You really don't get it."

"There's nothing to get," Roger's father said. "There will be no more of this music nonsense. It has gone on long enough!"

Roger's lips quirked in a way utterly lacking in humor. "You don't understand what I was saying at all," he said in a soft tone. "I wasn't asking you. I was telling you."

He inhaled a deep puff on his cigarette and, using all his best pot-smoking techniques, kept the smoke in his lungs. Roger stepped forward, one-two-three, his feet padding against the linoleum. With angry eyes his father watched, no words escaping his silently moving lips. Roger stopped in front of his father's face. Deliberately, very deliberately, Roger opened his lips and blew a mouthful of gray, swirling smoke into his father's astonished face.

Then he walked away silently. Each step resounded in his ears, echoing like the beat of a drummer at a nightclub when, though the sun was peeking over the horizon, no one in the crowd was leaving. His leather jacket felt heavy on his shoulders. Roger opened the door and started to step into the cold breath of the night wind, but paused.

Framed against the starry sky, Roger glanced over his shoulder, his eyes roving over his mother's pale fear, his father's crimson bluster. "Goodbye," he said, his voice low. "I'll write."

It was the last time he would ever see his parents.

Then Roger turned and walked outside. Whistling a jaunty tune, his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, he strolled down the street, his mind racing with plans. Foreseeing this turn of events, he'd packed his most important possessions—records, concert shirts, money, guitar—and tossed them in a spare corner of Mark's dorm room. He didn't need to spoil his grand exit by running in to get his things. He'd have to tell Mark they were leaving for New York a little early. They might not have enough to buy a car, but they could certainly afford a cross-country trip on the Greyhound bus. Besides, it wouldn't be very long before Roger got a nightclub job, and maybe Mark could work as a waiter. They could take care of themselves. He had nothing—not possessions, not money, not inertia—nothing connecting him to his family anymore.

Nothing at all.

Six months later, it occurred to Roger to write. He went to one of the little tourist traps, bought their cheapest postcard (it had the Statue of Liberty on it) and wrote, "Safe in NYC. Got a nightclub gig. Love from Roger."

Author's Note: Whether you love it, hate it or intend on using it for toilet paper, I would greatly obliged if you would press that little button and tell me why. Thank you!


	3. Benny

A/N. Erm. Sorry. I've had a lot of personal life issues that have gotten in the way of me updating this story. But I promise I won't disappear from the face of the planet again. At least not without a warning. At least I bring crackfic slash in penance, right?

I originally had the idea for this watching _Rent_ the DVD and wondering exactly why Roger was so upset that Mimi had dated Benny. I mean, he had to know that she dated people before him, right? And then the thought popped into my head, like a bolt from the blue: Roger had been in love with Benny. And this chapter was born.

And, with no further ado, what you've all been waiting for (for entirely too much time. Sorry!)...

Roger was not gay.

This was the important bit. He liked women just fine—their soft curvy bodies, their pouting lips and bouncing breasts. The women dressed in leather and ripped jeans, contorting themselves on the dance floor to the sound of his guitar, still made him breathe heavy and have to stare at the ceiling until his fingers regained their usual quickness.

It's just that he liked Benny too.

One cold winter's night, when Roger and Mark had been huddled together for warmth, trying to decide whether to spend their last few dollars on food or a motel room, Benny had walked up to them and said, "White boys like you two shouldn't be homeless. You don't know how to do it and, frankly, everyone else on the street cringes at you. How about I give you a place to stay for the night? It's not much and it's technically illegal, but it's warm." Roger and Mark had agreed eagerly, and a night had stretched into two, then into a week, then a month.

Then, about six months later, Roger had gotten a bottle of cheap whiskey to celebrate getting a nightclub gig and next thing he knew he was naked in bed with Benny with a throbbing headache. He was about to protest, _hey, I'm not gay, I totally like women, I was just drunk and thought this was a good idea_—but Benny's lips were on his and then they moved downward and Roger's fingers were gripping the sheets so hard they ripped and his mouth was in an O and somehow he had never really gotten around to objecting.

And, slowly but surely, without any of them quite bringing the topic up, it became understood that Benny and Roger were a couple, and that Roger would stop bringing home pink-haired teenyboppers delighted to screw a "real rock star," and that Benny, as the non-artiste of the group, would get a job with Grey Enterprises to support their boho lifestyle and this would not count as selling out.

Which was why Roger was so confused at Benny's announcement.

"You're—what?" Roger asked.

"I popped the question to Alison Grey," Benny said. "We'll be getting married in June."

"You're—what?" Roger asked.

Benny smiled the smile that always made Roger weak at the knees—the one that was almost a scowl, just with the tips of his lips turned up at the edges. But Roger was not going to be dissuaded by Benny's smile. "I'm going to get married to Alison Grey," Benny said. "It's really not that hard to grasp, Roger."

There were Rules about Roger's and Benny's relationship, and the most important Rule of all was that they did not talk about it. Ever. So it was testimony to how utterly flabbergasted Roger was that he blurted out, "But what about me?"

Benny smiled. "Don't worry. It'll be fine. Alison will never know about us."

Roger hadn't been to Mass in years, committed all seven of the deadly sins with great abandon and mocked the very idea of God with great glee. But inside of him was still that little Catholic schoolboy who had been hypnotized by the ritual of the Mass and had counted up all his little sins—stealing his brother's cookie, missing his daily prayer—preparing for his first Confession. And that little schoolboy recoiled, instinctively, the way he recoiled against rotten cabbage. _This was wrong. Marriage was sacred._

"So, what?" Roger said. "You want me to be the little rocker boytoy of the rich guy out in Westport? Sneak around while your wife"—he spat the word—"waits for you at home? Want to put me in a tiny Speedo and make me clean the pool while you're at it?"

Benny's smile turned lustful. "If you really want to…"

Roger glared at him, ignoring the tightening in his stomach that that smile always gave him.

Seeing his face, Benny turned serious. "It's really quite the opportunity," he said. "I can get in good with the boss if I'm married to his daughter. We can have all the things we dreamed of, Roger, with the Greys' money. Own the building fair and square, no rent, no need to worry about the fuzz kicking us out. I can get you that guitar you were drooling over in the store, and Mark can have that video camera he always wanted..."

"But I don't want a new guitar or no rent. That's just _stuff_. I can live without stuff. I want." Roger's voice broke. "I want you."

"And you'll still have me," Benny said. "More, probably. We hardly see each other at all, with you playing in the clubs till dawn and sleeping till three, and me working nine to five and networking after. We can spend weekends together—I've arranged it all with Alison. Imagine cool wine and hot sandy beaches, napping in the sun and going swimming to cool off and getting all hot and sweaty again together…"

For a moment Benny's seductive words swept Roger away on a wave of blissful temptation. A room all of their own, together, no Mark or whatshername the performance artist barging in, no work to rush off too, long luxurious afternoons stretching into nights…

Roger bit his tongue sharply. "That's not the point!"

"Then what is?" Benny looked honestly puzzled. "We can still be together, just richer this time."

"I don't want you to be with her," Roger said.

"Why? It's not like I love her."

"No," Roger said. "It's like I love you."

It was the first time either of them had said anything approaching those words. The Rules firmly forbid any mention of the L word. Benny's expression was full of shock and surprise, all furrowed brow and puzzled glance. It made Roger's heart swell, and all he wanted to do was take those stupid girly lips of his and bite them until they bled.

Instead, he hardened his heart and said one word. It was the only word he trusted his voice to say without shaking.

"Go."

For the rest of his life, though April and Mimi and the years of loneliness, Roger would never forget the exact look Benny had on his face that second. Actually, Roger had spent several hours one sleepless night in the throes of heroin withdrawal working out the perfect metaphor for it. Imagine a man in solitary confinement, his only interaction with cold, faceless jailors who never spoke. Then, one day, this man was given a small tabby kitten. The man lavished his love on this kitten—starving himself to give it food when his jailors took away a meal for some petty infraction, cuddling it and petting it all hours of the day, working for hours to make it some weak toy out of his own flothing. Then the jailors, those cruel unspeaking jailors, took the kitten away from him and bashed its head in. And the man never knew what sin of his had caused the death of his only friend.

The expression of the man when he saw the kitten's blood-covered body—that was Benny's expression when he got his coat and walked out the door.

Roger sat and stared into empty space for a while. Finally he took from the table the postcard he had bought to send to his mom. Instead he licked a stamp and put it on, addressed the postcard, stared at it for a few minutes and finally scrawled, "Best wishes for your wedding. Love from Roger."

Then, in a sudden movement, Roger grabbed his leather jacket and hurried outside.

The Man wore the same stained dirty trenchcoat he always wore, sitting on the same street corner Roger had passed, uncaring, a thousand thousand times. But now Roger walked directly to the Man, his strides long, and pulled out fifty bucks. "Give me something to make me feel better," he said.

The Man silently took a small bag of white powder from his pocket.

A/N: So. Love the story? Hate the story? Pissed at my lack of posting? Simply click the friendly little button and spread your opinions to the world! Or at least to my inbox.


	4. April

It was Christmas Day.

Roger whistled happily as he climbed the endless flats of stairs to get to their apartment. It was Christmas Day, and he had gotten April the most perfect present he could think of.

Before April had met Roger, she had wanted to go to college at NYU. Unfortunately, her father's deep disapproval of her new boyfriend ("long-haired loser," indeed) meant that he felt no compulsion to support her attempts at a degree. And there was no way Roger could afford to pay for her education—not on the money he made as a rock musician.

April seemed happy enough with her life in their squat. But he still saw her sometimes, reading books that appeared to be written in English but on closer inspection turned out to actually be in math, or idly working out a calculus problem on her napkin on slow times while she was a waitress. (She'd wanted to be an astrophysicist, before. How cool was that?) And so Roger had found himself, one day in the middle of July, talking to an admissions councilor at NYU.

He'd worn his nicest clothing, which, admittedly, meant that his blue jeans didn't actually have any holes in them and he wasn't wearing eyeliner. Even though it was sweltering outside Roger still wore his leather jacket to cover his track marks and gloves to hide his tattoos. But even so he felt awkward, pretending to read pamphlets full of successful people with scarily large smiles and attempting to ignore the open stares.

Finally he was paged through and found himself facing an admissions councilor who bore a distinct resemblance to Roger's father.

The councilor looked down his horn-rimmed glasses. "What brings you here, young man?"

Roger was going to take a deep breath and then explain exactly why he was here. Really, he was. But then his mouth opened and started saying words without his brain having much to do with it. "See, my girlfriend, April, she's this total genius at math, actually you accepted her before, but her dad wouldn't pay for her to go, because she was, um, dating me, and he didn't like me at all, and she chose me over school which is really romantic, if you think about it, but stupid too, because she wanted to be an astrophysicist, and now she isn't going to be anything besides a waitress, because they don't pay rock musicians anything nowadays, and it's not like I'm good enough to get a record contract yet so... yeah." Roger thrust a handful of paper napkins with theorems on them at the admissions councilor. "See, really smart."

The councilor smiled widely. "All right. Very good. Now why don't you say all of that again, but slower this time." He opened a notepad. "You say she was accepted here before?"

And so, several months of meetings (and Roger covertly stealing mathematical proofs to prove that April was, yes, that smart) later, the admissions councilor and the financial-aid bureau had agreed to grant April a full ride to NYU, to begin the fall of next year. He'd even thrown in a job for Roger making coffee, that would earn money more consistently than nightclub gigs and help April pay for books.

Roger had selected a basic group of classes he thought she'd like and was currently carrying under his arm, badly wrapped in cheap brown paper, her textbooks for all the classes. And he'd taken a side trip to the Man and purchased a few… _supplies_ so April and he could have a private, and very merry, Christmas party.

He couldn't wait to see her face open wide in that huge, beaming smile he loved so much.

And now Roger was whistling and happy and nothing could ruin his day. Of course, it was always possible that they would end up in one of those situations like in that crappy Christmas story his mom had read to him once, where the lady sold her hair to buy her husband a watch-chain and he pawned his watch to get her hair-combs and no one ended up with presents at all. But it was hard to imagine how, exactly, April would get him a present that would mean she couldn't go to college. Besides, Mark and his girlfriend the performance artist would do things like that, what with the way they carried on, arguing and breaking up and having loud make-up sex that the thin walls of their apartment did nothing to muffle and God, were he and Benny really that bad? But Roger and April were a more sensible couple, utterly in love of course, but more tender and less passionate.

Well, if you didn't count Roger's latest college endeavors.

Finally Roger reached the top of the stairs, panting a little for breath. The door was stuck—the door was always stuck—and someone had taken out the little piece of cardboard that usually held it open when someone was home. Well, that made sense; it was cold out, and April wouldn't want the extra breeze.

Roger pounded on the door. "April, open up!" His breath made little puffs of smoke in the breeze.

He waited, but the door didn't open, and no shout of "be there in a minute" came. Damn. Annoyance surged through Roger. April must have started without him. Now she'd be high all night and he'd have to wait until December 26th to tell her all about it, because when April was high she couldn't concentrate on or understand anything, except possibly differential calculus, her deep desire for a nap and her even deeper desire for more heroin. And what kind of pathetic Christmas present showed up the day afterwards? But it was her own damn fault.

Roger sighed and, putting his back into it, yanked the door open. "April?" he shouted.

No answer.

Their usual shooting gallery was the living room, much to Mark's great annoyance ("Can't you shoot up somewhere else? I mean, it's your lives you're screwing up, but I'm editing a movie here!"). And yet she wasn't there. Huh. Maybe she was taking a nap. Roger's annoyance dissipated. He loved looking at April as she slept—she was so childlike, so innocent, like she hadn't a care in the whole world.

"April?" Roger called again, more quietly.

Roger tiptoed past Mark's bedroom, in which his performance-artist girlfriend was, no doubt, still comatose until noon and would start chewing him out if he interrupted her beauty sleep. Quietly he opened the door to their bedroom, not wanting to disturb her.

She wasn't on their bed, either.

"April?" Roger said, louder, not caring if Mark's stupid girlfriend woke up. "April? April, where are you?"

A low groan came from inside the bathroom.

Roger hurried over.

"Oh, no," he whispered.

This, this couldn't have happened. This was not right. This was some kind of prank or something. April, and the blood, and—no. Any moment now she would stand up and they would laugh together at how gullible he was and everything would be all right.

But April took one last long shuddering breath, and then she didn't move again.

The only thing his eyes could fix on (this couldn't be happening, not to him, not to April, they were young and in love, they were immortal) was a note, which read, "We have AIDS. Love, from April."

"I… I brought you a present." Roger's voice cracked, and he cradled her body in his arms, his tears mixing with her blood until there was just one red liquid on the floor that, no matter how hard Roger would scrub in the future, he would never get clean.


	5. Maureen

Author's Note: Ugh, sorry this is late. Midterms have been kicking my ass. Here's a little Mark-and-Roger fluff to make up for it.

The tinny, cheap radio sang out, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

Roger felt like throwing his shoe at that radio, a possession bought in a time back when they actually had enough money to blow on such luxuries, but instead, mindful of the fact that they might need to pawn it, walked over to turn it off. The next few lines would be about toys in every store that he couldn't buy, and snow on the ground that meant that he'd have to spend the whole day under blankets. Besides, it wasn't even Thanksgiving. Why were they playing Christmas carols already?

He could have sung so much better than that guy on the radio.

Before.

Mark came in the room, a distracted, anxious expression on his face. The news was going to be about Maureen. Roger had learned to read Mark's conversation thanks to not talking to anyone else for almost a year now. "Maureen's not coming."

Roger had heard this before. "Figures."

"She says I don't pay enough attention to her," Mark said. "I'm neglectful. A bad boyfriend."

Roger had also heard that before. "Figures."

"She says she's breaking up with me in favor of a lawyer named Joanne," Mark said.

Roger looked up from the radio. "That's new."

Mark's mouth quirked. "Apparently she cheated on me with her while I was—"

"Cleaning up after my vomit while I sat in the corner having cold sweats?"

Mark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You know I wasn't going to say that."

Roger turned back to the radio. "But you were going to mean it."

Mark resented him. Roger knew that. It would be inhuman if Mark didn't resent him. Waking up in the middle of night to comfort Roger after one of his fevered dreams and try to get him back to sleep, like a baby, as his legs twitched uncontrollably. Not being able to write. Pulling ten-hour shifts cleaning bathrooms or waiting tables, to come home to Roger scratching himself until he was bruised and scabbed. Not being able to leave him alone for fear that he'd end up jumping out a window. Thank God Collins had been there to babysit Roger sometimes during the worst of it, or Mark's job would have been impossible. And never once did Mark complain or even voice a dark thought about how if Roger had never started shooting up in the first place all of this would have been avoided. Of course Mark resented him and Roger understood.

But Roger still felt a guilty kind of joy in petty punishments for it.

"Speaking of withdrawal," Mark said, "how are you doing?"

"I don't need heroin anymore," Roger said.

Mark looked like he was desperately attempting to find something to be happy about. "That's good—"

Roger cut him off. "I don't need it. But I still want it. God help me, despite everything, I still want it." He shook his head, shaking those dark thoughts away. "What's up with Maureen?"

Mark sat down on the bed and started absently picking at one of the strings frayed from the threadbare covers. "I don't have enough time for her," he said. "She doesn't feel loved. Joanne makes her feel special."

"You were helping me through withdrawal," Roger said. "Of course there wasn't going to be time for her. I was getting off heroin!"

"Maureen doesn't… quite see it that way." Mark smiled wryly at his own misfortune.

Roger's head tilted. "So me getting off heroin turned your girlfriend into a lesbian?"

Mark stared at him for a second. Then his lips twitched upwards. And then he was laughing, laughing so hard he had to gasp to breathe and then broke off in peals of laughter again, laughing so hard tears were coming out of his eyes, laughing as if the entire universe was a huge joke which he had just gotten, laughing.

Roger watched, bemused. "It wasn't that good of a joke."

"I know." And Mark was off in hysterics for another thirty seconds. "It's just that…" He paused and chuckled again. "So much has gone wrong for me. So goddamned much. April, you, writer's block, and now Maureen. At some point you have to laugh, or else you'd never be able to stop crying."

Roger stared down at the radio in his hands. "I know how that feels. Only I never seem to get to the laughing part."

Mark shook his head, finally seeming to calm down. "Hey, at least we can look on the bright side, right?" Mark said. "I was saving a bottle of champagne for Maureen's and my anniversary. Since that's not going to come…" Mark shrugged.

Roger smiled and dropped the radio. "Enjoy your dinner. Love from Maureen."

"Something like that," Mark said. But he made no move to get the champagne out of wherever he had hidden it, instead preferring to remain flopped on the bed. Roger knew what that feeling was; it was the sort of feeling one got on days like today, rainy Sunday afternoons that stretched out into infinity, with the sort of peaceful lethargy that had nothing to do and enjoyed having nothing to do, where one read the _New York Times_ or tried to find a radio station that wouldn't play Christmas music, tuned his guitar for a song that would never be played or wrote first lines of plays that would never become first pages.

"You know," Mark said, quietly, "Maureen's my heroin. Even though she's bad for me, even though I gave up my entire life for her and she demanded more, even though—God, even though everything, I still love her. I still need her. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't do anything when I'm not around her. When I'm near her I run hot and cold, I shiver. When she loves me, I'm so lucky, I'm more blessed out than any junkie with a hit. When she hates me, I flagellate myself looking for the one sin that turned her cold. When she beckons, I'm her slave, fulfilling her any whim. She's my heroin, and I'm addicted."

There was nothing Roger could say to that.

"And," Mark added, "even so, I would rather give her up to help you than stay with her forever."

The half-casual way Mark said that didn't mask the fact that he was baring a little bit of his soul. That—that was something about them Roger understood, on some murky level of his brain that surpassed words. Mark resented him. Of course Mark resented him. And yet Mark would never abandon him, Mark would sacrifice everything for him, Mark would always forgive him no matter how much of a dick he was, because, well, there wasn't really a because. Them trying to not love each other would be like them trying to jump out the window and fly.

Outside, the Man was selling heroin to someone who, nine months ago, could have been him. A lady bundled up in so much clothing she resembled nothing more than an egg fed a group of squawking pigeons. A man in a business suit walked hurriedly through the rapidly darkening streets, staring at the ground, for fear someone would make eye contact with him. Roger hadn't gone outside since April died, but still he loved staring out this window, at the vignettes of life that passed outside, flashes from struggles as dark and terrible as his own.

Finally, Roger broke the silence. "Want to go drink that champagne?"

"Getting drunk and weepy on cheap champagne that burns my throat?" Mark asked. "Can't wait!"

"Shut up."

And so, arm in arm, brothers in heart if not in blood marched into the future.


	6. Angel

Every day Roger would go to visit Angel at the hospital.

It was still so strange, going outside. Sometimes he felt this sense of vertigo, almost, at not having four walls around him, and he had to sit down and pretend the skyscrapers brushing the sky were actually walls, and the ceiling just happened to be blue and very high. Sometimes he wondered at the mass of humanity, like ants, crawling around at their lives, and how they could be so uncaring when his entire life was falling apart. How bizarre, to see people who weren't Mark, and who weren't mediated through the calming influence of their window.

But still he walked to the AIDS hospital, the chilling wind whipping around him, his leather jacket providing only the thinnest of protections.

Roger would justify to himself that the reason he went to see Angel was that Angel was a friend in need and, after all, Roger was very in support of helping friends of his that were in need. But in his heart he knew that there were two reasons he went to visit, and neither of them had anything to do with charitable impulses. One of them was that, with Mimi gone, he had nothing else to do except wish that Mimi was there and fail to write The Song, both of which activities bore a distinct resemblance to staring at the wall.

The other was that seeing Angel in the bed was a vision of what his future would be. No matter what he did—no matter if he wrote The Song, no matter if he stayed off heroin, no matter if he lost Mimi—no matter what, he would end up in the same white-sheeted bed in the same antiseptic room, cared for by the same bustling nurses with the same accusatory eyes. He would be as skinny and as weak, the perfect picture of some delicate Victorian consumptive, too good for this world, wasting away (except, Roger reckoned, he probably swore more). His tongue would be coated in thrush, his skin dotted with the purple marks of Karposi's sarcoma; he would have the same confusion and lapses of thought, the same shortness of breath, the same tiredness that made it impossible to stand.

Only a few people ever got to see their inevitable future. Roger was one of them.

"Hey," Roger said as he walked into Angel's hospital room, which smelled like disinfectant, sterility and death. "Looking good."

"Don't lie." Angel's smile had but a shadow of its old strength and joy.

Roger took a seat in the uncomfortable plastic chair. He had spent quite a lot of time in this uncomfortable plastic chair. It seemed rather like an old friend.

"There's a new nurse," Angel said, voice weak. "She won't come into the room. She's afraid I'll give her AIDS by osmosis."

"Walk outside and spit on her," Roger suggested.

Angel laughed, a harsh sound that halfway through turned into a bout of harsh, hacking coughs. "You would." Her eyes half-closed with tiredness, even that small effort destroying her.

"You don't look so good today."

"My T-cell count's high." Angel's perpetual smile faded for an imperceptible second. "And this morning I found out I couldn't stand up."

"Oh, God." Roger said, his voice sympathetic. But all his mind said was: another detail to add to his picture of his future.

Angel shook her head, a tiny movement. "No. Don't worry about me. Tell me. Tell me what's happening to everyone."

This was a part of Roger's every visit. Every detail of daily life at the loft was marshaled up to parade in front of Angel: Maureen and Joanne's latest petty revenge or tearful reconciliation; Mark's filming every last detail for his documentary, even though. Roger thought, no one would be interested in watching them; their neighbor's artworks created by throwing darts at paint-filled balloons; the other neighbor's husband shouting at her to get a job and flushing her poems down the toilet; the way everyone in the building teamed up to kick out this one woman's abusive pimp; Mimi's—

Well, Roger didn't mention Mimi very much.

"I really think I've got the chord pattern for The Song down," Roger finished up the latest news report. "It's going to be G-Am-Em-C. And I think the beat will go like this." He tapped his fingers on the institutional bedside table: dum-da-dada-dum-da-dada.

Angel, apparently extremely uninterested in Roger's musical ramblings, broke her customary silence during Mark's ramblings. "You realize," she said, "you need to go back to Mimi."

"Wait, what?" Roger said. "What does that have to do with anything? I didn't even mention her."

Angel leaned back in the sharply-creased hospital bed. "And a very conspicuous not-mentioning of her it was. If you didn't love her, her leaving wouldn't hurt so much."

"I don't love Mimi," Roger said. "She's just my ex. There were very good reasons why we were simply incompatible and it wouldn't work out."

"Life is too short not to be with the one you love," Angel said.

Roger lifted an eyebrow. "Did you miss, between your spouting of platitudes, that Mimi is a heroin-addicted stripper who cheated on me with Benny?"

Angel's smile turned up a notch. "I remember when I was young like you. Innocent."

"Wait a minute," Roger objected. "I'm not innocent at all. Ex-junkie HIV-positive rocker here. Besides, I'm pretty sure we're the same age."

"Not the point," Angel said. "As I was saying—"

Roger was not going to be dissuaded. "Actually, I think I might be older than you. How old are you, anyway?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm dispensing hard-earned wisdom here, pay attention," Angel said. "Sex, that was what I was about. A different man every night. And I was beautiful enough to pull it off, too. I must have slept with the entirety of the gay population of San Francisco, and most of the straight-boys looking for a night on the town, too. And it was glorious—the thrill of new flesh, the pure intense pleasure—you have no idea." Angel's face was beatific, lost in reminiscence. Then her face darkened. "I got AIDS. I moved out to New York City and I met my true love. And I have, what, six months of him, two months of which I get to spend shitting in a bedpan because I can't stand up?"

Roger had never seen the pure anger that flashed across Angel's face, usually so cheerful and joyful in the prospect of being alive. "I envy you," Angel said. "I envy all of you. Sixty years with Collins would not be enough. A thousand would not be enough! And I see people wasting their time with promiscuity and careers and Monday night football, and—do they not understand _they are going to die_?"

Roger started to say something, but Angel interrupted. "Let me finish. This has been building up for a long time. Besides, it's rude to interrupt the living dead." Angel paused, as if to recollect her place, then immediately returned to her anger. "And you have no excuse at all. Look at you. You have ten years to live? Fifteen? Why are you wasting them mourning for your lost love and never seeking your new one? Why are you wasting them protecting your heart so it can never be hurt again by losing someone you love?"

"Well, then," Roger almost shouted. "What do you want me to do?"

"Love. Friendship, affection, romance, charity—love. Love is a gift from up above. Share love, give love, spread love. Measure, measure your life in love. Seasons of love." As she spoke those final words Angel grew visibly weaker. The last words were murmured as she dropped slowly, finally, to sleep.

Roger stood and put on his leather jacket. With one last, lingering look at Angel, he walked away, his mind tracing out the familiar route to the CatScratch Club. He could catch her backstage, he was pretty sure she hadn't told the security guard they had broken up, he could say his piece—

The next time Roger saw Angel, she was dead.


End file.
